


Marked Man

by owlaholic68



Series: Evil Karma Carla [4]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 2
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe - Evil, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Mild Language, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-Consensual Tattooing, Possessive Behavior, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 08:52:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14712980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlaholic68/pseuds/owlaholic68
Summary: A stranger makes a bad decision. Carla gets possessive. Lenny makes a necessary argument.





	Marked Man

This wouldn’t have happened in any other town than Chinatown. People in the rest of the wasteland knew better than to mess with what Carla considered to be hers. And though most of the villagers of Chinatown knew of Carla and her ferocity, they didn’t quite so readily connect the dots when it came to, subsequently, dealing with Lenny. 

“So you’re, like, an adventurer?” The ghoul woman next to him at the bar asks. “That’s pretty neat.” She puts a hand on his arm. 

He politely shifts so the hand falls away. “Uh, y-yeah.” 

“So you wanna meet up with some of my friends later? We can all go out-”

He’s already shaking his head, trying to paste on an apologetic smile.

“-have a few drinks on the town, come on it’ll be fun-” She abruptly stops. Her eyes are staring at something just over his shoulder, her ghoulishly ashen face paling even further. He turns to look at whatever she’s transfixed by.

“C-Carla!” He exclaims, hopping off the barstool and hugging her from the side. The source of the ghoul woman’s discomfort is quite clear from this angle: Carla’s glaring daggers and flipping an actual dagger in her right hand. She smells of oil and metal, evidence of her recent work with the Brotherhood. 

She says nothing. Lenny knows this, from experience, is very bad. Carla needs to be distracted, and quickly. 

“I m-missed you,” he whispers, going on tiptoe to kiss her jaw, tucking his head under her chin. “I’m so g-glad you’re back, C-Carla-” She puts an arm around his waist and tightens. He goes quiet, recognizing the tense line of her shoulders. 

The ghoul woman squeaks and jumps backwards, Carla’s dagger embedded in the wood of the bar just inches from where she was standing, the blade still quivering from the lightning-fast throw. She raises her hands to her shoulders, every line in her body screaming apology. 

With one last glare at the cowering woman, Carla turns on her heel and leads them out of the bar and into the night. They walk to the car in silence, weaving through a small crowd of people gathering in the square for the evening fight.

The Highwayman is sitting half in shadow in front of the flashy gates. Carla half-pulls him into the car. It’s not that he’s struggling, it’s that she has longer legs and doesn’t seem to be in the mood to wait for him to catch up. 

“Len,” she growls, pushing him down onto the smooth leather of the backseat. Dizzily, he finds himself on his back with Carla on top of him. She kisses down his neck, not caring for his disfigured skin. She’s never cared about things like that. “You drive me  _ insane,  _ Len. People look at you and they think that it’s fucking  _ okay  _ to take what’s mine.” 

Lenny starts to protest that the woman was probably just being friendly, but his breath is knocked out of him in a sharp gasp. Carla’s teeth have found his neck, and this is not a gentle evening for her. 

“Mine,” she snarls, pinning his wrists about his head against the slippery seat. He yelps. Ow, that bite’s going to bruise dark and large, one of those kinds of marks that’ll take weeks to fully heal. “Mine, mine,  _ mine-”  _

“C-Carla,” he stammers, twisting his wrists in her grasp. Her tone of voice is shifting from sweet to possessive, dark and dangerous. 

“You know, this is really my fault.” She sits up, now straddling Lenny, keeping one hand on his chest and releasing his hands. From this angle, she looks almost ethereal, the light of the lanterns from the gate a halo around her head. “I should have made sure that everyone knows you belong to  _ me.”  _

She draws a long jagged knife, and Lenny’s heart stops. 

He’s silent as she drags it down his chest thoughtfully, not hard enough to pierce skin. Almost teasing. He’s at her mercy, the last thing he wants to do is draw her ire. She trails the knife up and over his shoulder, tapping the blunt edge on his flesh there. “Noticeable, and not going to hurt a lot,” she murmurs to herself, “shame the face would be too hard-”

“Please,” he whispers, deciding to start his argument out with a plea. “It’s not g-going to be-to be very pretty.” He swallows hard. Carla stops moving the knife and is now staring unblinking down at him. “I w-want it to be pretty.” Really, he doesn’t want  _ anything,  _ but if the options are between Carla carving him up with a knife and something that’ll be cleaner and safer, he’ll go with that option. 

“Hm.” She sits back on her heels. “That’s true. I’m not going to be able to do a very clean job with this,” she waves the blade, “and it probably won’t scar right, the way you heal.” She puts a hand on her chin and thinks for a full minute. “Alright. How about we go to bed, and see what we can brainstorm in the morning. Good night, Len. Love you.” 

“I l-love you too.” He turns on his side and yawns. That seemed weirdly gracious of her. 

* * *

Lenny wakes up, and doesn’t remember having fallen asleep. That’s rarely good. When he comes to, he tries to sit up, but it stopped by a hand on his chest. 

“Don’t move, Len.” Carla’s voice is coaxing and calm. “Just stay still.” 

“Do you want me to...stop?” An unfamiliar, deeper voice asks. 

“No. Keep going.” 

He cracks his eyes open and winces. His back is laying on something hard on a slight incline. He blinks once, twice, trying to get his bearings. There’s an unfamiliar ceiling above him, but that’s all he can make out without moving his head, which seems like a gargantuan task right now. He’s so tired, so numb, and even holding onto the thought that something’s off takes an effort-

Carla did something to him. He’s slow to realize it, but it worms its way into his sphere of concentration. 

“What-” his voice is sluggish and weak. It seems to stick in his throat. 

“Ssh,” Carla’s hand is on his cheek, carefully turning his face towards her. “You remember what we talked about a couple of hours ago?” 

No? He doesn’t? He remembers the whole possessive thing, then Carla almost carved him up like Thanksgiving dinner, then she agreed to find another solution. She takes his hand and he gets even more confused. Why can’t he really feel anything? Did Carla drug him with something, and if so, why? 

“Well, I got you something pretty. And it won’t hurt, not really,” she chuckles, “and it’ll last forever, Len.” 

A shrill buzzing noise makes its way into his ears. Oh. A tattoo. The artist, a broad-shouldered short man, is halfway through a looping L in the word  _ Carla  _ on his hip.

Carla must notice the glimmer of panic and confusion in his eyes. She sighs and reaches for something just out of his sight. “Don’t freak, Len. We talked about this, and you agreed with me, remember?” 

No? He starts to shake his head, he doesn’t remember, he doesn’t think he had specifically agreed to something like this-

There’s a sharp pin prick in his arm, then he’s floating, he’s not sure of anything. If he doesn’t really remember, maybe he  _ did  _ agree with her, maybe this whole thing was his idea. He feels light and good and  _ warm  _ in a way he hasn’t felt for a long time, such a long time, ever since he started travelling with Carla.

“Better?” 

He smiles, dopey and silly and happy to see her face. “Yeah. Pretty, you’re so pretty and wonderful, Carla.” The words are coming smooth and even, the connection between his brain and his mouth flickering and fading to the back of his consciousness. He’s just talking, he doesn’t know what he’s saying, but Carla’s smiling, so it must be good. He’s forgotten what’s even going on. “You should get somethin’ too, somethin’ nice like a flower. You deserve it, you deserve e-everything...”

“Hey, we’ll worry about that later, okay?” She squeezes his hand. “For now, just lay there and relax.” 

Yeah, he does that. He dozes off to the hum of the tattoo machine and Carla’s warm hand in his own. 

* * *

The next morning hits him like a Wanamingo. He wakes up shivering and achy, curled up somewhere cool and in semi-darkness, a slight vibration shifting him from side to side. The backseat of a moving car, he realizes. It’s early morning, judging by the slowly lightening sky. He moves the wrong way and groans, an achy burning coming from his left side. 

“Len? You awake?” Carla peeks over her shoulder from the front seat. “Hey, take it easy, okay?” 

All he can do is wince in reply, trying to push down the dizzy nausea that hovers in the back of his throat. What did she  _ do  _ to him? His bony fingers dig into his throbbing head. He vaguely remembers everything that happened through the fog of pain and depression clouding his brain. He felt great last night, he thinks, but now he feels like a pile of dirt. 

All he wants is to feel good again. But he knows how this one goes: he feels amazing, then terrible, then good, then even worse, then kind of okay, then nothing. It would be all too easy to get swept up in that endless, fruitless chase. 

So that just leaves him here with himself. Just him, Carla, and a slowly waning amount of trust in her. Just him, Carla, and the stark knowledge that she hurt him, that she will hurt him again. 


End file.
